I also work in the resource-constrained / embedded native space and have had to work within the kinds of constraints you're describing. I think you're severely misunderstanding what the comment you're responding to is proposing.
Then you'll have to point me to a real world example of an API that works like that, because this is balderdash (seriously? Implement malloc and free on top of a stack-based memory pool just to decode a buffer?) to my eyes.
